How to Use Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams On Laptop [3 Various Methods]

If you’ve ever been in a Teams meeting and wished you could just draw something out instead of describing it in words — that’s exactly what the Whiteboard feature is for. Whether you’re collaborating on ideas with your team, mapping a project workflow, or explaining a concept to a client, the Teams Whiteboard gives you a shared digital canvas where everyone can draw, write, and collaborate in real time.

In this tutorial, I’ll walk you through everything — from opening the whiteboard during a meeting to using it outside of one. I’ll also cover the tools inside the whiteboard, some useful tips, and a few things that trip people up the first time.

What Is the Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams?

The Microsoft Teams Whiteboard is a built-in collaborative canvas powered by the Microsoft Whiteboard app. Think of it like a giant digital whiteboard in a room where everyone in your meeting can walk up and write on it — except it works across laptops, tablets, and even phones.

It’s part of your Microsoft 365 subscription, so if your organization uses Teams with a work or school account, you most likely already have access. It saves automatically to the cloud, meaning you can come back to it later, even after the meeting ends.

Before You Start: Quick Requirements

A few things to check before diving in:

• You need to be signed in to Teams with a work or school account (not a personal Gmail or Outlook.com account).
• Your Microsoft 365 plan needs to include Whiteboard — most standard M365 plans do, but Teams Essentials might not.
• If you’re in an organization and can’t see the whiteboard option, your IT admin may need to enable it from the Microsoft 365 Admin Center under Settings > Org settings > Services > Microsoft Whiteboard.

Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams On a laptop

Let’s look at three different ways to use a whiteboard in Microsoft Teams.

Method 1: Using a Whiteboard During a Teams Meeting

This is the most common way people use it. You’re in a meeting, an idea comes up, and you want to sketch it out live.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Join or start your Teams meeting on your laptop.
2. Once you’re inside the meeting, look at the toolbar at the top of the screen.
3. Click the Share button (it looks like an upward arrow or a rectangle with an arrow).
4. In the sharing panel that appears, scroll down until you see the Microsoft Whiteboard option.
5. Click on it. You’ll get two choices: New whiteboard or an existing one you’ve used before.
6. Choose New whiteboard to start fresh.
7. The whiteboard will now open and be visible to everyone in the meeting.

That’s it. Everyone in the meeting can now see your whiteboard. By default, all attendees from your organization can also draw and write on it — it’s a truly shared canvas.

Tip: If you want people outside your organization to collaborate in the meeting, you’ll need to enable external access to Whiteboard, which your admin controls.

Method 2: Add Whiteboard as a Tab in a Teams Channel

You don’t need to be in a meeting to use the whiteboard. You can pin it as a tab in any Teams channel or group chat so your team can work on it anytime — even asynchronously.

Here’s how:

1. Open the Teams channel or group chat where you want to add the whiteboard.
2. Click the + (plus) button at the top of the channel, next to the existing tabs.
3. In the search bar that appears, type Whiteboard and select it from the results.
4. Give your whiteboard a name and click Save.
5. The whiteboard will now appear as a tab in your channel.
6. Post a message in the channel letting your team know the board is ready — otherwise, they might not notice it.

This is really useful for things like ongoing project planning boards, sprint retrospectives, or team brainstorming boards that you want to keep coming back to over time.

Method 3: How to Add a Whiteboard in a Teams Chat

If you’re in a one-on-one or group chat (not a channel), you can still access a whiteboard. The steps are almost identical to Method 2:

1. Open the chat conversation.
2. Click the + icon at the top to add a tab.
3. Search for Whiteboard, select it, name it, and save.
4. The whiteboard now lives inside that chat for both of you to use anytime.

This works great for smaller collaborations — say, working through a design idea with a single colleague without needing a full meeting.

Exploring the Teams Whiteboard Toolbar: What Each Tool Does

Once your whiteboard is open, you’ll see a toolbar — usually at the bottom of the screen. Here’s a quick breakdown of what’s in there:

• Select tool – Click and drag to select objects on the canvas. Great for moving things around.
• Pencil/Ink tool – Freehand drawing. If you have a mouse, it works fine, but a touchscreen or stylus makes this shine.
• Shapes – Insert pre-built shapes like rectangles, circles, arrows, and more. You can resize and color them.
• Sticky notes – Add colorful sticky notes with text. Perfect for brainstorming, where everyone drops ideas on the board.
• Text box – Add typed text anywhere on the canvas.
• Eraser – Erase specific ink strokes. There’s also a velocity eraser that removes more the faster you move.
• Reactions – Add emoji reactions like thumbs up, hearts, etc. — useful during live voting or feedback sessions.
• Templates – Pre-built layouts for common use cases. More on this below.
• Timer – A built-in countdown timer you can run on the whiteboard itself. Handy for timed brainstorm sessions.

Teams Templates to Save Time

One of the most underused features in Teams Whiteboard is templates. Instead of starting from a blank canvas every time, you can use a pre-built layout.

To use a template:

1. On the whiteboard canvas, click the + icon (or the Templates option in the toolbar).
2. Browse through available templates. You’ll find options like:
   • Brainstorming
   • Retrospective
   • SWOT Analysis
   • Kanban Board
   • Ice Breaker
3. Click a template to preview it, then click Use to apply it to your canvas.

You can also create and save your own custom templates — useful if your team always starts brainstorming sessions the same way and you don’t want to rebuild the structure from scratch every time.

The “Follow Me” Feature: Guiding Your Team Around the Board

If you’re presenting the whiteboard during a meeting and you want everyone to focus on the same area you’re looking at, use the Follow Me feature.

Here’s how:

1. While sharing the whiteboard in a meeting, look for the Follow option in the whiteboard toolbar.
2. Enable it, and all participants’ views will sync to yours — wherever you scroll or zoom, they follow.
3. Participants can click to break free of the follow mode if they want to explore on their own.

This is really handy during workshops or training sessions where you’re walking people through content step by step.

Collaborative Cursors: See Who’s Doing What

When multiple people are working on the same whiteboard at once, you can see their cursors moving around in real time — each labeled with their name. This makes it obvious who’s writing what and where everyone is on the canvas.

It’s a small thing, but it makes the whole experience feel a lot more like being in the same room together.

Saving and Accessing Whiteboards After a Meeting

One question I see a lot is: “Where does the whiteboard go after the meeting ends?”

Good news — it doesn’t disappear. Microsoft Teams automatically saves your whiteboard to the Microsoft Whiteboard app, which is tied to your Microsoft 365 account. Here’s how to find it after your meeting:

1. Open the Microsoft Whiteboard app on your laptop (you can search for it in the Start menu or visit whiteboard.microsoft.com in a browser).
2. Sign in with the same work account you use in Teams.
3. All your whiteboards will appear there, including ones created in meetings.

You can also reuse a whiteboard in a future meeting. When you click Share > Whiteboard in a new meeting, you’ll see a list of whiteboards you’ve created before — just pick the one you want to bring back.

Practical Example: Running a Sprint Retrospective on Teams Whiteboard

Let’s say you’re a project manager and want to run a quick retrospective with your team at the end of a sprint. Here’s how you’d set it up:

1. Start your Teams meeting with the sprint team.
2. Share the whiteboard from the Share tray.
3. Instead of a blank canvas, load the Retrospective template (What went well / What didn’t / What to improve).
4. Enable collaborative cursors so you can see who’s adding what.
5. Give everyone 5 minutes using the built-in Timer to add sticky notes to each column.
6. Once done, walk through the board together, group similar notes, and vote using Reactions.
7. After the meeting, the whiteboard saves automatically — share the link with the team for reference.

That entire workflow happens in Teams without any third-party tools.

Common Issues and Quick Fixes

• Whiteboard option not showing in Share tray – Your IT admin may have disabled it. Ask them to enable Whiteboard in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
• Can’t draw on the whiteboard – Check if you’re a participant in the meeting. Guests from outside the org might have view-only access depending on settings.
• Board is blank after reopening – Make sure you reopened the same whiteboard. Teams sometimes defaults to creating a new one.
• Laggy performance – This can happen on older laptops with weak GPUs. Close unnecessary browser tabs and apps before your meeting.

Tips to Get More Out of Teams Whiteboard

• Use sticky notes for brainstorming — they’re faster than shapes and easy to move around.
• Color-code your sticky notes by category or team member to keep things organized.
• Use the lock feature to lock elements in place once you’re done arranging them — prevents accidental moves.
• You can embed a video or web link directly onto the whiteboard canvas for reference during discussions.
• If your team uses Whiteboard regularly, create a shared template with your standard meeting structure and reuse it every time.

Conclusion

The Whiteboard in Microsoft Teams is honestly one of those features people overlook, even though it’s already available to them. But once you start using it — whether in meetings or as a shared space in a channel — it really changes how your team works together.

Instead of long explanations, you can just sketch things out. Conversations become clearer and more focused, and you automatically have a visual record of what was discussed without taking notes.

Also, you may like some more Teams tutorials:

• Print Microsoft Teams Chat
• Zoom In on Microsoft Teams
• Archive Files in Microsoft Teams